ARAMARK Launches Innovative Program To Encourage Healthy Snacking For K-12 Students
SnackFactor offers more than 150 healthy snacks for schools across the nation
Philadelphia, PA - ARAMARK, a leader in providing professional services, introduces SnackFactor by ARAMARK, a healthy snack program for middle and high school students. ARAMARK provides food service to more than 420 school districts nationwide and serves nearly 350 million meals annually to K-12 students.
In addition to healthy breakfast and lunch-time meal options at school, snacking is important for children and adolescents to meet their energy and nutrition needs for growth and development, as studies indicate that snacks contribute to over 20 percent of the daily energy intake of children. Currently, our nation's teens and tweens are facing a number of health issues, with 30 percent of all adolescents being overweight and over 15 percent classified as statistically obese.
With SnackFactor, ARAMARK will offer students more than 150 healthy snack options, including mainstream and organic versions of low fat granola bars, cereal bars, baked chips and snacks, animal and graham crackers, yogurt, water, 100% juice and smoothie beverages, fresh fruits and vegetables. Through ARAMARK's various service delivery systems, healthy snacks can be offered on the traditional food service line, before and after-school, in the classroom, during state test periods, in grab-and-go kiosks and vending machines.
"ARAMARK understands that good nutrition is essential for sound academic performance and impacts the health and success of our nation's children," said Jeff Wheatley, President, ARAMARK Education, School Support Services. "With SnackFactor, ARAMARK has the opportunity to encourage students to make healthy choices and to help school districts provide effective, innovative solutions around individual communities' local school wellness efforts."
SnackFactor is an extension of ARAMARK's Treat Yourself Right® program, a secondary-grade level nutrition awareness communication program focused on reinforcing a healthy lifestyle message to middle and high-school aged students. SnackFactor offers a wide variety of healthy snack products consisting of 200 or fewer calories per serving, no more than 35 percent calories from fat, 10 percent calories from saturated fat, 35 percent or less sugar by weight and zero grams of trans fat.
All snack offerings adhere to increasingly enhanced state and federal nutritional guidelines, and meet the requirements of the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 which require school districts participating in the federally-funded National School Lunch Program to have Local School Wellness Policies established by the first day of the 2006/2007 school year.
To support the SnackFactor program, ARAMARK has created an exclusive proprietary on-line database tool that allows food service directors to develop a customized offering that works within their school district's nutritional guidelines. This tool allows for easy updates to changing nutritional policies, new product availability, pricing, portioning, and distribution to ensure that the best product mix both in nutritional value and taste appeal is being offered to students.
SnackFactor products are offered in conjunction with ARAMARK's two award-winning dining brands, the 12 Spot and U.B.U. Lounge. These brands were developed as a result of extensive market research, establishing ARAMARK as the first and only school food service provider that offers a menu and environment designed specifically for and by tweens and teens.
The 12 Spot is designed to reflect the habits, choices and nutritional requirements of today's tweens. The 12 Spot features healthy new menu items as well as brightly painted walls, fun food packaging, new lighting and music, updated and creative merchandising materials and casual uniforms worn by the 12 Spot food service team.
Similarly, the U.B.U. Lounge was developed to meet the specific preferences of teenagers. High school lunchrooms, in ARAMARK school districts, adopting the U.B.U. Lounge have new colors infused throughout the lunchroom, sophisticated lighting, new food packaging, and student lounge areas, complete with furniture, music, and huge graphic images of fellow teens.
SOURCE: ARAMARK